Work in progress: a quantitative study of effectiveness in group learning

It is generally assumed that group studies are more effective for students than individual studies. The objective of this work in progress is to quantitatively evaluate and analyze the effect of collaborative studies on individual student’s performance. This effort would help the student stimulate interest in group learning and collaboration along with exposing them towards multiple problem solving approaches while working individually or in groups. This way the students are challenged to use their existing knowledge and approach, and augment it further with the knowledge and approach provided by group partners. While there are several efforts that focus on developing new group learning techniques, we intend to study the efficacy of previously proposed techniques under various test settings for EE and CS courses without significantly diverting from the course framework

Survey of Current Network Intrusion Detection Techniques

The significance of network security has grown enormously and a number of devices have been introduced to perk up the security of a network. NIDS is a retrofit approach for providing a sense of security in existing computers and data networks, while allowing them to operate in their current open mode. The goal of a network intrusion detection system is to identify, preferably in real time, unauthorized use, misuse and abuse of computer systems by insiders as well as from outside perpetrators. This paper presents a nomenclature of intrusion detection systems that is used to do a survey and identify a number of research prototypes.  Keywords: Security, Intrusion Detection, Misuse and Anomaly Detection, Pattern Matching

Implementation of Anomaly Based Network Intrusion Detection by Using Q-learning Technique

Network Intrusion detection System (NIDS) is an intrusion detection system that tries to discover malicious activity such as service attacks, port scans or even attempts to break into computers by monitoring network traffic. Data mining techniques make it possible to search large amounts of data for characteristic rules and patterns. If applied to network monitoring data recorded on a host or in a network, they can be used to detect intrusions, attacks or anomalies. We proposed “machine learning method”, cascading Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the Q-learning methods to classifying anomalous and normal activities in a computer network. This paper investigates the use of PCA to reduce high dimensional data and to improve the predictive performance. On the reduced data, representing a density region of normal or anomaly instances, Q-learning strategies are applied for the creation of agents that can adapt to unknown, complex environments. We attempted to create an agent that would learn to explore an environment and collect the malicious within it. We obtained interesting results where agents were able to re-adapt their learning quickly to the new traffic and network information as compare to the other machine learning method such as supervised learning and unsupervised learning. Keywords: Intrusion, Anomaly Detection, Data Mining, KDD Cup’99, PCA, Q-learning

THERMOREVERSIBLE IN-SITU NASAL GEL FORMULATIONS AND THEIR PHARMACEUTICAL EVALUATION FOR THE TREATMENT OF ALLERGIC RHINITIS CONTAINING EXTRACTS OF MORINGA OLIFERA AND EMBELIA RIBES

Objective: The present study was planned to develop thermo-reversible in-situ gel for the treatment of allergic rhinitis (AR). The objective of the present investigation was to develop a mucoadhesive in-situ gel with reduced nasal mucocilliary clearance to improve the local effect of the polyherbal extract in the treatment of allergic rhinitis (AR). The prolonged residence of drug formulation in the nasal cavity is one of utmost importance for intranasal drug delivery. The prepared formulations were subjected for gelling temperature, gelling time, viscosity, gel strength, pH, drug content, mucoadhesive strength, spread ability and irritancy studies.Methods: In the study the pluronic F127 (PF127) based mucoadhesive in-situ nasal gels containing Moringa olifera (MO) and Embelia ribes (ER) extracts were used having antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect. A polyherbal thermosensitive in-situ hydrogel was designed and evaluated by the mixing of pluronic F127, poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG400) and Xanthan gum with a small amount of (hydroxypropyl methylcellulose) HPMC K4M and Carbopol 934. Total 13 thermosensitive in-situ gels of extracts were prepared through combination of HPMC K4M or Carbopol or xanthan gum and PF127. All the preparations were investigated, and the selected method for gel formation underwent the thermal transition from sol to hydrogel.Results: The mucoadhesive gel after being administered into the nasal cavity, get transformed into the viscous hydrogel at body temperature, which diminished nasal mucociliary clearance and prolonged the duration of action. The in-situ nasal herbal gel prepared by combination of different concentration of to HPMC K4M or carbopol or xanthan gum with PF127 (10% w/v) produces the better and effective gel. The findings of evaluation parameter indicate that the in-situ gel prepared by combination with corbopol were better quality compared to HPMC K4M and xanthan gum.Conclusion: From these findings, it can be concluded that in-situ herbal nasal gels may be potential drug delivery systems for Moringa olifera and Embelia ribes extracts to overcome first-pass metabolism and thereby to improve the bioavailability. The mucoadhesive in-situ gel system is a promising approach for the intranasal delivery of polyherbal extracts for the therapeutic effects improvement of Allergic rhinitis

Competition Law in Asia: The Interplay of Power Dynamics in the Digital Market

The digital economy and multi-faceted markets have significantly contributed to the efficacy of most transactions governing modern humankind. Digital platforms have become an irreplaceable cross-border asset that has acclimatized with technological advancements. However, there is obscurity in the methods of accommodation of digital economy in competition laws of most jurisdictions globally. Consequently, there are ascertainable issues in competition laws of such jurisdictions. Such issues remain unaddressed due to the absence of evaluation parameters of digital platforms in the conventional market system and culminate into an Implicit and undetected abuse of dominance. This study used the doctrinal method by highlighting the distinctness of contemporary digital markets and their consequential issues. This study explicated the issues in the competition that need to be independently addressed, considering the intricacies of digital platforms. The presence of non-price factors, multi-faceted markets, and data-driven networks being the primary source of such novel issues have been particularly explicated. The established premise was substantiated by way of case studies of major events involving factors such as predation, deep discounting, and data privacy. Elucidation of the competition system in most jurisdictions in Asia and the accommodation of digital platforms in the same was also sufficiently enunciated to present a holistic insight to the established premise. Finally, the authors suggested ways to sufficiently address the issues arising from the distinctness of digital platforms, thereby giving rise to a dynamic and all-inclusive competition. KEYWORDS: Digital Markets, Competition Law, Data Privacy

Neoteric Design Power Sustained 3-Bit Asynchronous Counter Using CNFET Based MCML Topology

Leading digital circuits namely register, flipflops, state machines and counters drive operational aspects and potential applications in Integrated Circuit (IC) industry. MOS Current Mode Logic (MCML) based implementations with rapid response and simul- taneous generation of complemented output is all set to become indispensable in nano regime industry. This paper attempts to optimize and address performance- based analysis of digital circuits namely NAND, D flipflop and 3-bit asynchronous counter by practicing MCML based implementation. These circuits are con- templated on four design parameters namely delay (tp), power (pwr), Power Delay Product (PDP) and Energy Delay Product (EDP). This research focuses on rel- ative analysis and emanate a salient optimal appli- cation of Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) and Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistor (CNFET) based 3-bit asynchronous counter. In ad- dition to this, the two configurations of the MCML counter are then compared against applied VDD at 16-nm technology nodes using HSPICE simulator. CNFET based 3-bit MCML counter is observed to be much faster (9.75×), significant improvement in gross power dissipation (11.93×), material refine- ment in PDP and EDP (116.39× and 1165×) re- spectively as compared to the conventional counter- part. Therefore, CNFET based implementations comes to the fore as resilient technology supporting high level integration in nano scale regime

Revisiting India’s Amended Citizenship Act 2019 in Light of Constitutional Ethos

The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 and the National Register of Citizens in India are perceived as reflective of a religious classification in grant and continuance of Indian citizenship. The study aimed to discuss the future effects of the amended Citizenship Act 2019 and suggest alternatives to accommodate India's constitutional ethos. A considerable fraction of the Indian citizenry was discorded with this Act because Article 14 of the Indian Constitution prohibits discrimination based on religion, among other grounds. On the other hand, the state's stance asserted that the law aims to protect the persecuted religious minorities from other states. This study dealt with the nuances and intricacies of the problem to explicate viable solutions by an in-depth analysis of the issue in an unprejudiced manner where it used a combined doctrinal and empirical research to assess the perspectives on the policy in the Global South from the Indian experience. The findings reflected that while a majority of the provisions in the Act can be justified based on constitutional parameters, its few provisions are unconstitutional. In summary, even after juxtaposing all the justifications of the Act against the allegations, a considerable portion of the Act remains unconstitutional, and it needs to be revisited based on constitutional parameters

RAPD-based genetic relationships in different Bougainvillea cultivars

The present study deals with authenticating existing knowledge about 21 Bougainvillea cultivars comprisingof 9 hybrids and their parents through RAPD analysis. The 19 degenerate primer sets generated 234 bands from which 158(67.5%) were polymorphic. The UPGMA based dendrogram divided 21 cultivars into two major groups with Jaccard’ssimilarity coefficient ranging from 0.51 to 0.942. Group A had three cultivars namely Trinidad, Formosa and Dr. H. B. Singhin which Dr. H.B. Singh was confirmed as a hybrid of other two cultivars. Group B was sub divided into 8 clusters. Theparentages of 7 out of 8 hybirds have been confirmed based on clusters. The study concluded that the RAPD technique issuitable for confirmation of parent-hybrid relationship